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I hope you all had a great end to 2017 and a Happy New Year! It’s taken me a couple of weeks to get settled, but I’m ready to taken on 2018. If you’re looking for new ideas or a training plan for 2018, keep an eye on our weekly Renegade Rowing Project. If you’d like something more tailored to you and your goals please reach out to me and I’ll let you know all about my individual programming rates. To get started with the Renegade Rowing Project, try to commit to a certain number of Renegade Rowing Blocks per week. Mixing in just 2 or 3 with your regular training can step up your game to a whole new level. Comment with your results and let other Renegades know how you’re doing!

I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend full of holiday parties and 2k’s! Have a great remainder of the holiday season with Christmas and New Year’s coming up. Stay safe, stay warm, and get in some solid workouts with friends. The next post won’t be until after the New Year since I’ll be traveling, but use next week to try something new, go for a long run or ski, or just take time to recover and stretch. Hit it hard this week and I’ll see you in the New Year!

Spend 4min in a Passive Squat each day working on a 4-count Box Breath while you do it.

RR Social WOD:

Hike Harvard Stadium @6:30am on Thursday

Strength and Conditioning WOD 12/18/17:

6 Rounds For Time …

10 Push Ups

250m Row (@2k Pace)

10 Pull Ups

:30 Rest After Each Round

It’s Christmas Week, but we can still fit in some solid work. We’ve got a few more solid days left in 2017, so let’s make the most of them! Today’s Rowing WOD is a chance to commit to your new 2k split from last Saturday and work on digging deep when the going gets tough. Every round is an opportunity to fight for that split, just like in the third 500m of a 2k. Focus on good form with the push ups and pull ups to strengthen our shoulders in different planes and promote good connection through the core. Attack each round like it’s your last and rely on that 30 seconds of rest to reset and do it all again. A good goal is to go sub 20 minutes.

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving and got a chance to enjoy time with family and friends. We did the YMCA Pie Run in Middletown and braved the cold to earn our Turkey and Mashed Potatoes! Here is the training plan for this week. Let’s kick off December on a strong note and bring it home for the New Year. Let us know if you have any questions or would like to join the Renegade Rowing Project in fighting for your goals!

One thing that all good athletes have in common is a sense of efficiency. The athlete that can maintain proper mechanics and spend the least amount of energy to complete a task will be able to push harder and farther compared to the athlete that just flies and dies. This weeks’ Rowing WODs introduce a key concept to being efficient in rowing and may improve your efficiency in longer wods.

Checkout the focus for Monday’s RWOD… Start the workout by rowing 1,000m at 28 strokes per minute and holding a 2k+5 split. This will get you warm and ready to go to work. During the 4min rest fit in 20 push ups however you want. Then, set the monitor for 3′ of work and 1′ of rest. Each 3-minute piece is broken into 1-minute sections that should be rowed at the designated stroke rating holding a 2k+7 split.

In order to hold the goal split while decreasing the stroke rating you must perform a ratio shift. A ratio shift changes the timing of the stroke on the drive and the recovery. For example, shifting from 1 on the drive: 2 on the recovery, to 1 on the drive: 3 on the recovery. This is a challenging workout. Use it to develop a sense of efficiency. A proper ratio shift maintains the power per stroke but allows the rower time to breath and prepare for the next stroke a little bit more.

Post your results for this weeks workouts and your Experience with ratio shifts.

Below are some pictures of Mike T. after working on staying connected through the finish. What does your finish look like? Is it efficient? How fast do your hands move through the finish? … Just a few things to think about as we continue to work on suspension through the stroke and balanced finishes.

It’s been a couple of years since you’ve regularly heard from me on the blog. I’ve been busy sharing the sport of rowing with the world at Community Rowing Inc. While I will still be forging ahead as a Rowing Ambassador at CRI, I wanted to get myself and others motivated to keep training and improving. That’s where the Renegade Rowing Project comes in. I will be doing my best to post every Sunday night with a new plan for the week and a weekly challenge. If you’d like to join the Renegade Rowing Project all you have to do is jump on in and join the fun. Be sure to post your results and experience to comments or share them on social media. We’ll be doing the same using @RenegadeRowing and the tags #RenegadeRowingProject #RowStrong. I look forward to getting after it with you!

Rowing is the utmost definition of Sport in modern society. Merriam-Webster and Dictionary.com give two definitions of sport. One, Sport is an athletic activity requiring skill or physical prowess and often of a competitive nature. Two, Sport is a source of diversion and recreation engaged in for pleasure. Whether you’re a middle school rower just learning to scull or an Olympic hopeful trying out for the national team, Rowing provides challenge, competition, and fun.

Rowing trumps all because it offers the best of sport. It tests our skill and athleticism as individuals and as part of a team. Rowing requires an unwavering calm and trust that pushing yourself to wit’s end without seeing where you’re going will develop personal satisfaction and boat speed. It takes balance, grace, and power. Rowing is saying goodbye to the chaos of life by shoving off the dock and taking time for yourself and your team to focus on a common goal.

A Quick Note

Our plan will be combining the best of many worlds, rowing, fitness, strength, nutrition, mobility, flexibility, and recovery. The goal of this post is to outline all the tools available in our plan. This post will introduce certain principles and ideas that will be important to know when following our plan. If it’s not possible to include all of the details for a certain part of our plan here, then those details will be covered in separate posts. If you only read this post you should have a strong idea of how our plan will run. Just know that everything we do has a purpose and your coaches are happy to explain any part of the plan you may be curious about.

Where Do We Go From Here?

As you can tell our plan is different. It challenges the standard long slow distance model of training by combining more high intensity interval training through strength and conditioning and rowing. The best way to get a handle on our plan is to see it in action. The following attachments outline the Renegade Rowing Training Plan Template and give examples for the work we will be doing day in and day out. The best advice we can give you is to keep an open mind, be ready to learn and work hard, and be ready to be part of something. Take a look at the charts, calculations, and diagrams, but most of all get in the gym, get in the boat, and give it everything you’ve got. This is our plan and we’ll know best how to improve and progress toward our goals by the work we do together. We take pride in being different. We are specialized generalists who are experts in both fitness and rowing. Our plan develops firsthand athletes that know how to compete, work hard, and row fast based on personal experience. We will be strong and row fast for life.

How’s it going Renegades? Today we’re taking a look at some BC Rowers during a practice they had on Concept2 Sliders. This is a video review that I put together to help them and you develop your stroke and find new areas to improve upon. I’ll be posting regular video reviews about once a week, usually on Thursdays. If you’d like feedback on your stroke or would like to see me talk about a certain area of the stroke, please let me know in the comments. If you’d like to be featured in the weekly Video Review please send me a 5 stroke video via email to pat@renegaderowing.com.

Today’s topic relates to how you hold your posture through the finish. Are you balanced on your sit bones or falling off them? How does your point of contact with the seat affect your posture and positioning throughout the stroke? Are your shoulders/chest big and broad or collapsed? What’s your neck and gaze look like? These are things to think about and an area where you can make a quick change to see big gains. Let us know what you think and if you have any questions.